A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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When did constant consumerism become a thing? Most finance watchdogs say the tradition really took off near the end of World War II, when the economy was thriving, and the market exploded with products Americans didn’t even know they wanted. And even in an economy rocked by a pandemic in 2020, according to NPR, buying is back on track to exceed 2020 levels this holiday season. The result of all that spending means consumption drives 70% of our country’s GDP, but it’s also driving very real environmental issues. Let’s break down what the env...
A recent poll found that people today, especially younger people, feel helpless when it comes to fighting climate change. Here’s the thing: That’s exactly how polluting corporations want you to feel. The more people believe their actions don’t matter, the more they find themselves rolling over and accepting the status quo. Yes, solving the climate crisis requires bold action from governments and corporations, but that doesn’t mean individuals have to sit on the sidelines. Not only do our actions add up and influence others, we also have th...
By Mark Armao. The Biden administration on Thursday, Nov 18, announced its plans to strengthen federal protections for the nation’s waterways by replacing a Trump-era rule that significantly reduced protections for thousands of wetlands and streams. In a press release, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlined its plans to work with the Army Corps of Engineers to revise the agencies’ definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS. The types of waterways included under WOTUS determine which types of waters receive protect...
By Mark Armao. Indigenous land defenders were in a British Columbia court Monday after they were arrested during police raids that took place on Wet’suwet’en territory Friday, Nov 19. During the raids, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested 29 people, including Wet’suwet’en and Haudenosaunee land defenders, two people described as elders, two photojournalists and a supporting chief from the Gidimt’en clan. Those arrests, part of an ongoing, government-sanctioned effort to enable the construction of a proposed pipeline on unceded Wet’suwe...
The Indigenous Environmental Network condemns the actions of Canada as it inflicts settler violence against the Wet’suwet’en peoples, hypocritically breaking both Wet’suwet’en and Canadian law to push TC Energy’s illegal Coastal Gaslink pipeline through unceded territories. By entering sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory with Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), dogs and assault rifles we are witnessing state-sanctioned violence on behalf of an oil company, and such barbarous acts of violence inflicted upon Indigenous peoples cannot be def...
COP26 ends with global agreement to accelerate action on climate this decade Two weeks of intense negotiations finally complete the Paris Rulebook For the first time COP agrees position on phasing down unabated coal power The Glasgow Climate Pact caps two years of diplomacy and ambition raising COP26 concluded on November 13, 2021 in Glasgow with nearly 200 countries agreeing the Glasgow Climate Pact to keep 1.5C alive and finalize the outstanding elements of the Paris Agreement. Climate negotiators ended two weeks of intense talks on Saturday...
By Maddie Stone. When Daranda Hinkey, a 23-year-old member of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe in northern Nevada, gazes across the austere expanse of old growth sagebrush 25 miles southwest of her tribe’s reservation, she doesn’t see Thacker Pass, the future site of America’s largest lithium mine. She sees Peehee Mu’huh, or “rotten moon,” the Paiute name for a place made sacred by the bones of her ancestors. According to stories told by elders, Peehee Mu’huh got its name many generations ago, when Paiute people were massacred the...
World leaders, environmentalist and protestors from nearly 200 countries are meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 . There, they will work out the rules of a new global climate pact. Decades of climate talks have spawned a host of acronyms and jargon. As per Reuters, here is a guide: “PARIS AGREEMENT Successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty that expired in 2020. Agreed in December 2015, the Paris Agreement aims to limit the rise in the average global surface temperature. To do this, countries that s...
Indigenous groups from around the world are preparing to travel to Glasgow for COP26 to call for climate action and demand a greater say in negotiations, the Arizona Republic reports. However, despite being among the least culpable and most harmed by the climate crisis, they will not be fully credentialed while they seek to influence the important discussions already dogged by problems of inequitable access. Since being elected as a tribal leader 15 years ago, Fawn Sharp, now the vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation in what is now...
WASHINGTON. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed today to remove 22 animals and a plant from the endangered species list because of extinction. They join the list of 650 U.S. species that have likely been lost to extinction. Species being proposed for delisting include the ivory-billed woodpecker, Bachman's warbler, Scioto madtom, San Marcos gambusia, eight species of Southeastern freshwater mussels, eight birds and a flower from Hawaiʻi, and a bird and bat from Guam. "The Endangered Spec...
In the United States, a federal judge has denied tribal leaders’ bid to temporarily block digging for an archaeological study required before construction can begin for a Nevada lithium mine on what they say is sacred land where their ancestors were massacred more than century ago. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du refused three tribes’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking the trenching planned to collect samples near the Oregon state line at the site of the largest known lithium deposit in the United States. The tribes say their ancestor...
LA CONNER, W.A. As Skagit Chinook salmon populations and the Southern Resident Killer Whales dependent upon them continue to dwindle, today the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community (“Swinomish” or “Tribe”) sent a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (“Corps”) for failing to uphold the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Corps has granted construction permits to dike districts in the Skagit Delta under the Tidegate Fish Initiative Agreement (TFI) for five years without requiring that the agreed-upon hundreds of acres of est...
DILLINGHAM, AK – Bristol Bay Tribes and communities celebrated today’s announcement that the Environmental Protection Agency will resume work on permanent protections for the Bristol Bay watershed that could safeguard the region from mines like the Pebble project. In a court filing, the agency said it will reinstate the 2014 “proposed determination” under section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act, that if finalized, would have restricted mining in the region to protect the watershed. With today’s decision EPA is now resuming the process that is n...
A pesticide that’s been linked to neurological damage in children, including reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders, has been banned by the Biden administration following a years-long legal battle. Environmental Protection Agency officials issued a final ruling on Wednesday saying chlorpyrifos can no longer be used on the food that makes its way onto American dinner plates. The move is intended to better protect the children and farmworkers, according to the agency. In a statement, Administrator Michael Regan called...
By Olivia Rosane. Reprinted with permission from Ecowatch. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is out, and it offers an urgent call to act immediately on the climate crisis. The new report, released Monday, found that the climate is already changing in ways that are unprecedented in thousands to hundreds of thousands of years and that some effects, such as a certain amount of sea level rise, are already irreversible. It also warned that temperatures will likely spike beyond 1.5 to two degrees Celsius...
By Mark Hertsgaard. The United Nations COP 26 climate summit this November was already set to be one of the most important diplomatic gatherings in history, a meeting where world leaders will, without exaggeration, decide the future of life on earth. In a landmark report released Monday by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), some of the world’s foremost climate scientists added further urgency to the summit by clarifying that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), as envisioned in the P...
By Scott Denning. Summer isn't even half over, and we've seen heat waves in the Pacific Northwest and Canada with temperatures that would be hot for Death Valley, enormous fires that have sent smoke across North America, and lethal floods of biblical proportions in Germany and China. Scientists have warned for over 50 years about increases in extreme events arising from subtle changes in average climate, but many people have been shocked by the ferocity of recent weather disasters. A couple of t...
Cameron Macias bent down to examine a small pile of sawdust-filled scat on the floor of the former Lake Mills on the Elwha River in the northwest corner of Washington state in 2016. It was a sign that beavers were moving into the area after a 100+ year absence. “There’s very small dam-building activity in some of the side tributaries,” says Macias, who was working at the time as a wildlife technician for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, of which she is a member. “It’s kind of funny and ironic because of the dam removal,” Macias says with a laug...
By Max Graham. Every spring, the shallow ponds and spruce forests of the Yukon Flats, in Interior Alaska, stir with the flapping of scoters and scaups, the laugh-like yelps of white-fronted geese and the high-pitched whistle of wigeons. Up to 2 million birds arrive each year to nest in some of North America’s most productive waterfowl breeding grounds. Along with salmon, moose and other wildlife, they provide food for the human residents of the region, where a half-gallon of milk can cost $7.99. “It’s not only our subsistence,” said Rochelle Ad...
By Kaitlan Sullivan. Reprinted with permission from EcoWatch. The Department of the Interior on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge until a comprehensive analysis can determine the environmental impact of drilling in the area. A review “identified defects in the underlying record of decision supporting the leases, including the lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives’’ required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), ABC News reported. The suspension includes 10-year...
More than 75 percent of the world's food crops rely on pollinators, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Through their pollination, bees not only promote biodiversity, but also secure our food supply. But one in four species of bee is at risk of extinction in North America, according to the United Nations Environment Program. And the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has recorded declines in bee populations in Europe, South America, and Asia. A combination of...
May 2021. Children and farmworkers may soon be spared from a toxic pesticide linked to lifelong intellectual disabilities. On April 29, a federal appeals court sided with Earthjustice and its clients, and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to either ban all food uses of chlorpyrifos or figure out how to regulate it in a way that protects those vulnerable populations. Why is chlorpyrifos harmful? Developed by the Nazis for warfare, organophosphates like chlorpyrifos were repurposed for agriculture. Now chlorpyrifos is widely used...
By Julia Conley. Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams. Indigenous rights and climate action groups are set to hold an “Evict Enbridge” celebration on Wednesday and Thursday to mark Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s deadline for Canadian oil and gas company Enbridge to shut down its Line 5 pipeline. Ahead of Wednesday’s deadline, which Whitmer set last November, the Democratic governor called Enbridge’s continued use of the Straits of Mackinac—under which Line 5 has carried more than half of Ontario’s oil supply since 1953—a “ticking time...
By Jenna McGuire. Commonly used herbicides across the U.S. contain highly toxic undisclosed “inert” ingredients that are lethal to bumblebees, according to a new study published Friday in the Journal of Applied Ecology. The study reviewed several herbicide products and found that most contained glyphosate, an ingredient best recognized from Roundup products and the most widely used herbicide in the U.S. and worldwide. While the devastating impacts of glyphosate on bee populations are more broadly recognized, the toxicity levels of inert ing...
After over 175 years of publishing, Scientific American made a major editorial announcement on Monday: the historic U.S. magazine will officially adopt the term “climate emergency” for its coverage of the human-caused crisis. The move came as part of a new initiative led by Covering Climate Now, a global consortium of media outlets dedicated to improving climate coverage. SciAm was one of the nine initial signatories of the Climate Emergency Statement. Common Dreams is a member of the consortium, has signed on to the new statement, and has bee...
